


In My Mind Because

by beedekka



Category: True Detective Season Two
Genre: Bittersweet, M/M, Masturbation, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 18:31:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5508305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beedekka/pseuds/beedekka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paul stands on a hotel balcony and looks down at the night life of LA: people having fun, male hookers, the lights of the big city.  He's supposed to be asking around about Ben Caspere, but all the questions in his mind are fixed on something else entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In My Mind Because

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bond Girl (Bond_Girl)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bond_Girl/gifts).



> I hope you don't mind me going a little bittersweet with this treat, Bond_Girl - I listened to the song you were associating with Paul in your letter, and it really seemed to click with that canon scene on the hotel balcony you mentioned :)
> 
> ['Sail'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS6470AO3FQ) by AWOLNATION.

Paul looked out over the street below him and held the smoke from his cigarette inside his lungs until they burned. The hooker in the black was there again, leaning against the tree and idly checking his phone. The little white screen shone in his hand, and Paul wondered what he was looking at: messages; weather forecast; sports results? He coughed out the smoke and took a swallow of beer to wash away the acrid taste. What did you do to pass the time in between fucking strangers who pulled up to the kerbside?

One of the guys with the angel wings was there too, hanging around the benches on the grass, and his feathers ruffled in the wind. They were both young and pretty – Paul caught himself – not 'pretty', _'handsome'_. Why were they doing this for money? He grimaced. _Because_ they were young and pretty, because young and pretty was a best-seller and they all looked like that. He wished they didn’t, so that it would be easier to stop his mind from wandering to dark places with them.

It would be so simple to lock his wallet and badge in the wall-safe, erase every trace of his identity from his body, and go down there. He had a roll of bills in his pocket, burning a hole through the denim just like his cigarette was suddenly burning sharply against his fingers. Paul tossed the charred filter over the balcony and watched it get whipped away in the air currents. His skin stung where the embers had been resting, but the pain didn’t really make the connection to his brain. One more little scar – so what? The money was supposed to be paying for information, though. That’s what he was meant to be doing tonight. And instead he’d been standing up here drinking… how much? Six bottles, seven? There was one left if it was seven, and then there would be nothing stopping him – he’d have to go down and talk to the people on the street, and bite his lip so the wrong thing didn’t come spilling out.

The black-clad hooker walked over near the angel and they were talking for a moment, looking at the phone screen together, laughing. Why were they happy? How were they happy doing this? Paul wanted to ask them _that_ , not whether they’d ever seen some guy who’d taken a drive up the highway with his eyes melted out. He wanted to know how young, pretty boys who had it all going for them ended up fucking men in alleyways and parking lots, and hanging around in niteclub bathrooms until a stranger joined them in the stall. Why did it go that way?

He took another swallow of the beer, draining the bottle, then stepped back into the room to snag the final one from the countertop. It _was_ the eighth. _Fuck_. Paul closed his eyes, twisting off the cap through the loose material of the front of his t-shirt and feeling the cold condensation on the side of the bottle smear onto his abdomen. His skin was hotter than hell, but he didn’t flinch. What did angels feel like? He wanted to say that they would be cool to the touch like that, firm and smooth.

Another deep pull from the drink; it bubbled up and he wiped his mouth with the side of his wrist. His lips were wet, warm and soft, but his stubble felt rough and he went into the bathroom to look at himself. He should shave more often; the shadow added years to him.

He thought about how much older he might be than those boys – ten years? Seven? Five? They were all of them trailer trash, lifting on the breeze, except they sparkled like something bright and glorious, their skin shiny and glittering while his was suddenly uncomfortably tight. Paul braced one arm heavily on the sink and searched his eyes in the mirror. His face was flushed, and the shape of the bottle felt good in his hand; right weight, slick and hard.

 _Don’t,_ he willed himself to stop thinking about the hooker, not to keep imagining what it would be like to…

“Fuck. _Fuck!_ ”

His dick was already achingly hard in his pants, and he set the beer down clumsily on the counter beside the toilet to unzip the jeans and shove his hand inside. Just a few minutes… He would let himself have just a few minutes fantasising, mind flashing on images of the angel taking him in his mouth, or fucking him slow and whispering in his ear, wrapping him in his magnificent wings.

The roll of bills rubbed against the back of his hand through the cotton of his pocket, and the friction was like fingers stroking his skin as he jerked his dick. _”Oh god,”_ he heard himself moaning over and over again, and suddenly he was coming hard, letting his thoughts grey out into nothing as he shot blindly over the porcelain.

When he opened his eyes again, he stared at the mess for a second before flushing the toilet and tucking his dick back into his jeans. “Okay,” he murmured, a message to his own resolve: “No temptation. No distraction.” Then he laced his boots up properly, pulled on his battered leather jacket, and went to work. 

 

***

 

The next morning he woke to white noise in his head and grit in his mouth, and when his blurry vision cleared he thanked the heavens that he was back in the hotel room with an empty space beside him. Then he rolled over and up, automatically stumbling to the open balcony to light a cigarette he didn’t want, and wincing as he felt it settle against the sore spot on his middle finger.

Paul didn't remember it now, but it would come back to him later, that he'd met a guy on the street last night who was going to end up completely altering the course of his life.


End file.
